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LLNL, Ampera partner to develop thorium-based TRISO fuel
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has formed a strategic partnership with Ampera to develop the company’s nuclear fuel concept through a project named THUNDER, for Thorium Unimodal Droplet Ejection for Reactors.
The focus of THUNDER is fabricating TRISO made with kernels of thorium rather than the usual uranium. LLNL and Ampera will evaluate and optimize liquid metal–jetting technology to produce highly uniform, spherical kernels of thorium-232 for later processing into TRISO fuel.
Konstantin L. Nikitin, Masaki Saito, Vladimir V. Artisyuk
Nuclear Technology | Volume 144 | Number 2 | November 2003 | Pages 152-157
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3436
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The possible application of 6Li as a burnable poison and U-Np nitride as a fuel for space nuclear reactors has been studied. The analysis was performed for an infinite lattice with a leakage in the form of buckling and (U-Np)N fuel with 20% uranium enrichment. The combination of 7Li as a coolant and 6Li as a burnable poison results in a favorable criticality behavior during burnup. The parameters taken into consideration include the different fuel and coolant compositions, the form of absorber material, and the various absorber mass and concentrations. It was found that absorption properties of 6Li allow reaching the burnup value up to 67 GWd/tHM while reactivity swing is comparable with eff. The corresponding reactor lifetime is ~10 to 30 yr.